Picks: Looming, Grave Pleasures, Chelsea Wolfe

It’s been a surprisingly prolific fortnight for ear-catching new releases. We’ve got three fabulous albums to recommend to you this week, along with honourable mentions for the new efforts from Satyricon and Counterparts, which are both definitely worth your time.

Seed is the second album by Looming, the Illinois alt-rock band whose debut was the subject of the latest episode of The Decayist podcast. It’s every bit as arresting as Nailbiter and arguably a little tighter and more focused. The bass guitar lifts it into post-punk territory and the vocals are by far the album’s most distinctive feature and its star performance. Both belong to Jessica Knight, whose brilliance shines from start to finish. Uplifting it ain’t, but this is another beautiful record from a terrific band.

Anything that draws extensively from gothic, guitar-infused post-punk is going to be a winner in our eyes, and Motherblood by Grave Pleasures – formerly Beastmilk – is exactly that. It’s their second album under the Grave Pleasures banner and every review we’ve seen points out its intoxicating mix of Killing Joke, Danzing, The Cult, The Cure and a ton of other bands of that ilk. We’re simply going to do the same, because it’s in pulling all these styles together into a coherent whole that Motherblood becomes top-notch. Having bags of swagger doesn’t do it any harm either.

California’s Chelsea Wolfe attracted rather a lot of attention for her 2015 album Abyss, not least in rock and metal circles. Her music doesn’t really fit in that sphere sonically but its spirit of experimentation and undeniable atmospheric heaviness makes it a welcome citizen in the rock world. Hiss Spun is already critically acclaimed, and with good reason. It’s a haunting, interesting and weighty epic that’s achingly credible and littered with too many highlights to list in a short review like this. There’s plenty for metalheads too. Lovely.